The Pennsylvania Supreme Court won’t issue a decision about mail-in ballot problems as PA counties begin early voting.
With early voting beginning just weeks before the November election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to decide mail-in ballot issues.
The ongoing debate surrounding whether to toss out incorrectly dated ballots has been at the forefront of the conversation around election integrity in the Commonwealth.
On Saturday night, the court denied a request by voting rights and left-leaning groups to stop counties from throwing out ballots that aren’t dated correctly.
The court does not want to confuse voters when early voting has already begun. The unsigned order said, “The Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.”
Chief Justice Debra Todd dissented, writing, “We ought to resolve this important constitutional question now, before ballots may be improperly rejected and voters disenfranchised.”
Justice P. Kevin Brobson concurred, saying that the groups waiting more than a year after an earlier high court ruling to make their request was “an all-too-common practice of litigants who postpone seeking judicial relief on election-related matters until the election is underway that creates uncertainty.”
Democrats, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, side with the plaintiffs’ argument that voter-written date is meaningless in determining whether a ballot arrived on time.
Republicans argue that requiring mail-in ballots to be dated by the voter is an election safeguard.
The court did agree on Saturday to hear a GOP challenge to a lower court ruling that required officials in a county to notify voters when their mail-in ballots are rejected and allow them to vote provisionally on Election Day.
